Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was not at the Aspen Ideas Festival, but he's all anyone can talk about – or rather, not talk about.

At the Ideas Festival, the various economic and financial luminaries simultaneously privately wondered about Bernanke and publicly refused to speculate. Both current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and a former one, Bob Rubin, were badgered about Bernanke's plans several times. They stubbornly refused to allow even a wisp of an answer.

Take this exchange (pdf) between Secretary Lew and his interviewer, David Leonhardt of the New York Times.

Leonhardt: "Are you playing a major role in helping the president decide who to nominate for the next term at the Fed? Not monetary policy."

Lew: "David, I think I'm going to stick to my answer on monetary policy, which is my conversations on this with the president should remain private."

Leonhardt also interviewed Rubin, who evaded the question of Bernanke's term quickly:

"Ben Bernanke reinvented the Federal Reserve system … the Fed decided that because Congress was dysfunctional, the only way to get the economy going again was QE1, QE2 and QE3 … he's done a wonderful job."

Rubin credited Bernanke with saving the economy with QE1, which he called "critical to getting off the abyss".

Bernanke launched the nation's largest economic and financial stimulus program a few years ago in the form of "quantitative easing": buying up treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities from the market. While this has been very helpful to the markets and, to some extent, the economy, it has also left the Fed holding trillions of dollars of bonds, which, eventually, it will have to sell. There is, among financial nerds, intermittent panic over the issue of the Fed's unwinding of this program.

The chairman has been coy about the timing of his plans to leave the Fed. That has, naturally, served as a signal for everyone else to speculate wildly. President Obama has not been helpful to the cause after essentially saying Bernanke hated his job. One thing it's safe to assume, however, is that with his term up in January, Ben Bernanke won't be there for the burial of QE – as he was for its birth.